Bill C-293

Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness Act

An Act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness

This enactment enacts the Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness Act to require the Minister of Health to establish an advisory committee to review the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada in order to reduce the risks associated with future pandemics and inform a pandemic prevention and preparedness plan.
It also requires the Minister of Health to establish, in consultation with other ministers, a pandemic prevention and preparedness plan, which is to include information provided by those ministers.
Finally, it amends the Department of Health Act to provide that the Minister of Health must appoint a national pandemic prevention and preparedness coordinator from among the officials of the Public Health Agency of Canada to coordinate the activities under the Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness Act .

Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness Act

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to join this debate on this private member's bill, Bill C-293.

There are a lot of conversations going around now about how a different approach to the pandemic would have looked. I want to go back a little and talk about how the pandemic did evolve, what the decisions by government were and how we should have a review of that. However, that review cannot be done by one of the Prime Minister's ski buddies. As my colleague, the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, said, it needs to be a transparent review.

It was not too long ago that Canadians were not able to come together to celebrate Christmas or Easter. I remember Canadians were not able to celebrate birthdays or funerals with one another or with family. That happened so quickly. It drove a wedge between Canadians. That is what the Prime Minister is so very good at, wedging and dividing Canadians. That is what we saw with the government's approach during the pandemic.

We saw the government stigmatize people who made different health choices. We saw people who were literally not able to travel. We saw people who wanted to work but due to a personal health choice were unable to go to work. Therefore, they were fired and were unable to support their families.

I think we learned a lot through the process of the pandemic. Coming out of it on the other end, where we are now, I believe Canadians would never go back and agree to the decisions that were made over that period of time. We did have a review of the approach the government took, and it was found that the use of the Emergencies Act was unconstitutional. The constitutional rights of Canadians were broken by the government.

How can we then have the same government put people in charge of doing yet another review? Trust has been broken. That is something that takes a long time to build back. There are so many things that happened during the months of the pandemic. We are now seeing that money was flying out the door, whether it be through CERB or CEBA, and how that money was allocated inappropriately.

The flagship of inappropriate spending that we see right now is the arrive scam app. Literally, a two-person company was given $20 million of taxpayers' money, and it did not have any IT expertise. It is unbelievable, as we are looking at some of this.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise to speak to Bill C-293 from my friend across the way. I think the last time I spoke to this bill, I was suggesting some slogans for his leadership campaign, but I continue to wish him very well in all of his personal endeavours. He did very well, although he did not take my advice to go with the slogan I suggested at the time.

I do, more seriously, want to recall and build on some comments I made in my last intervention on this bill regarding the impact the pandemic has had on our communities and the need to seriously reckon with some of the challenges that have resulted from that.

The last time I spoke in the House on this bill, I said that I wanted to conclude by saying that I am very concerned about some of the social and cultural impacts of this pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, we were already seeing trends where there was a breakdown of traditional community and greater political polarization. People were less likely to be involved in neighbourhood and community organizations, community leagues, faith organizations and those kinds of things, which were becoming more polarized along political lines. Those existing trends were dramatically accelerated through the pandemic, when the restrictions made it difficult for people to gather together in the kind of traditional community structures that had existed previously, and we have seen a heightened political polarization with people being divided on the basis of their views on masks and their vaccination status.

As we evaluate what happened during the pandemic, and this is more of a cultural work than a political work, we need to think about how we can bring our communities back together, reconcile people across these kinds of divides and try to rebuild the kinds of communities we had previously where people would put aside politics and were willing to get together and focus on what united them.

Over the last two weeks, with the exception of some arrive scam hearings that brought us to Ottawa, most of us were in our constituencies connecting with our constituents. I had a number of round tables and discussions with my constituents. It has really come to the fore again and again, as I have talked to people since the pandemic, how the failures of government during the pandemic impacted trust in government decision-making and, indeed, trust in our institutions. It would be desirable for people to be able to trust our institutions, but that trust has to be earned. Government policy-makers and public institutions cannot demand trust simply by virtue of the positions they hold. They have to earn that trust by demonstrating themselves to be trustworthy.

For many Canadians, the pandemic was a demonstration that institutions they had trusted were not as effective as they had thought they would be and were not defending their concerns or their interests. People were affected by the pandemic in various ways. They were, of course, forced apart from each other. They were also impacted by draconian policies that demonized people and punished people for personal health choices.

This has not just affected that moment in time. It is not just something that happened in the past during the pandemic and is now over. There have been profound consequences in social trust as a result of those events, and it was a result of the fact that the government was not prepared for this.

In the years before the pandemic started, in the years leading up to it, the government was not attending to the appropriate stockpiles of materials. Then the government madly thrashed around, giving different advice, such as saying one should not mask and then that one should mask. Initially, the public health authority said that masking was counterproductive and then reversed that recommendation. Initially, we were told to take any available vaccine, and then we were told to actually take these ones as opposed to those ones.

There was inconsistency, and I think a lack of humility, in the kinds of pronouncements that were made by governing authorities. This has affected social trust in significant ways, and understandably so.

We had an exchange on this specific point recently, during the break, at the public accounts committee, where, in the process of Conservatives criticizing aspects of government decisions, a Liberal member said we should not do that because that is impacting social trust. Our view is that government institutions have to earn trust, and it is our job as the opposition to hold them accountable for their failures.

Therefore, it is through accountability, through honest reckoning with the failures of government and other public institutions, that we are able to come to the kind of reconciliation that is required. I do think there is a stock-taking required. Although Conservatives do not support this bill because there are some significant problems in the way the proposed reviews are structured, as my colleagues have pointed out, there is a need for a fulsome and independent reckoning. The government failed in so many different ways in the course of its management of the pandemic and the kinds of decisions it made throughout.

In my own constituency, from conversations I have, people now struggle to believe anything they hear from the government or any other kind of official institution because of how badly betrayed they felt by the inconsistencies and the demonization that happened during the pandemic. We need to have a government that does its job, that plans for crises effectively and that understands its responsibility to earn the trust of Canadians rather than demand the trust of Canadians. Governments ought to try to earn people's trust through the work they do.

At the same time I think about the kinds of processes that should happen for investigations of this nature, and they require authentic independence. We see over and over again with the government that, when it wants us to be looking at or investigating some kind of issue, it always wants that investigation to be something where it can control the outcome. We are dealing with this issue, for instance, in the government's approach to the arrive scam scandal.

Every independent investigation has been extremely critical of government procurement. The government has now said it is going to have an internal investigation within CBSA by an investigator who is within and reports to the chain of command within CBSA. Inevitably, that is a process that can be controlled by the government, and the people who should be held accountable through that process actually cannot be held accountable effectively because the investigator is part of that internal structure. Again, we see a process proposed in this private member's bill that has similar obvious kinds of flaws.

To review the key points, the government failed profoundly during the pandemic. It contradicted itself and spent a great deal of money on matters that were not pandemic related. We saw it, in the early days of the pandemic, pursue this horrifying power grab, trying to seize on the worry that existed at the beginning of the pandemic, saying it wanted to have the power to effectively make law without Parliament. Conservatives pushed back and put a stop to that. Then we saw how it tried to use the circumstances of the pandemic to create division and conflict within this country at the expense of certain Canadians who were making certain choices.

There is a need for a reckoning, but it has to be an honest reckoning. We need a government that is prepared to do the work to rebuild trust, not a government, like the Liberals, that continually fails Canadians yet demands their faith and trust in spite of all these failures. We need a government that is honest with Canadians and works to get things done for their good.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to speak to my support for Bill C-293, an act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness.

Allow me to begin by recognizing and thanking the exceptional efforts of various health centres, health care workers, and compassionate individuals and organizations in my riding of Richmond Hill to safeguard the health and safety of Canadians throughout COVID-19.

First, I would like to recognize the efforts of long-term care health centres, notably Mariann Home in Richmond Hill, for their unwavering protection of our seniors and vulnerable community members during the pandemic. It is truly commendable that not a single long-term care facility in Richmond Hill lost a resident to the pandemic, which is a testament to their vigilance.

Second, I would like to recognize the immense contributions of our health care heroes, the doctors, nurses and workers, at the Mackenzie Health hospital in Richmond Hill and the dedicated team of health care professionals at Richmond Green facility, which was pivotal in administering vaccines across the community during the pandemic.

Third, I would like to thank the great compassion and generosity demonstrated by Richmond Hill residents and organizations, such as the New Canadian Community Centre and Canada China Trade Innovation Alliance, which donated personal protective equipment, masks and other supplies to hospitals and care centres across Canada.

Last but not least, I would like to recognize and thank all of our frontline workers who confronted high risks of COVID-19 exposure to continue providing critical, everyday services for our communities. These are our grocery store workers, police and firefighters, public transportation workers, small business owners, and social service workers.

I am so proud to speak of all the commendable efforts and hard work within the Richmond Hill community in safeguarding the health and safety of Canadians during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their contributions have inspired and guided our government's response over the last four years to the largest public health emergency we have experienced over the last 100 years.

I am also pleased to note that, as a member of the Standing Committee on Health, I had the opportunity to study the clauses of this bill in depth to ensure it would provide the best outcomes in protecting the health and safety of Canadians in preparation for future public health emergencies.

With all that being said, I am speaking to this bill today because it intends to achieve what has become particularly important to our government and to Canadians since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is how we can deliver a system, in collaboration with provinces, territories, and health care partners, that would work to effectively prevent and prepare Canada for future pandemics.

Allow me to begin now to outline the three requirements that Bill C-293 would establish for the Minister of Health to create a strong federal response and preparedness plan. First, it would establish an expert review of Canada's COVID-19 response. Second, it would develop and regularly update a pandemic prevention and preparedness plan. Third, it would appoint a national pandemic prevention and preparedness coordinator to oversee and implement the plan.

The first requirement would be to establish an advisory committee to review Canada's response to the COVID-19 pandemic within 90 days of the act coming into force. The government has benefited from and taken actions in response to various reviews and assessments on Canada's pandemic response, including a number of COVID-19-related reports from the Office of the Auditor General of Canada. For example, based on lessons learned, the Public Health Agency of Canada has made progress on strengthening public health assessments and early warnings of public health threats, managing Canada's national emergency strategic stockpile of medical assets, and improving the collection, access, sharing and use of public health data in collaboration with provinces and territories.

These are just a few examples of where advancements have been made in addressing recommendations for improvement that would equip Canada to deal with future public health events more effectively and achieve better health outcomes for all Canadians.

I will now touch on the second and third requirements. The second requirement that the Bill sets out is for the Minister of Health to establish a pandemic prevention and preparedness plan within two years of coming into force. The development of a pandemic prevention and preparedness plan must leverage existing plans, recognize and address jurisdictional implications, and allow for a flexible, adaptable approach to emergency response and preparedness efforts, as every pandemic is different.

Lastly, the third requirement would be the appointment of a national pandemic prevention and preparedness coordinator. Their role would be to coordinate the previously mentioned activities under this proposed act. The Public Health Agency of Canada is currently working with key partners to incorporate lessons and practical application from the COVID-19 experience in Canada and internationally to support a robust approach to managing future health emergencies, including testing and updating preparedness plans.

It is also important to keep in mind that we must continue to work closely with provinces and territories, which are at the forefront of the health system in Canada and are responsible for implementing public health interventions within their jurisdictions.

Before concluding, allow me to touch on a key component of this bill, which is the adoption of a One Health approach. One Health recognizes that integrating science and expertise on human, animal, and environmental health is essential to understanding, preventing and responding to pandemics. To protect our own health, we must recognize how intertwined it is with the health of animals and the environment. This has been a very important concern of my constituents in Richmond Hill.

We fully support this approach, as it is one that is based on science and evidence. This has been integrated by the Public Health Agency of Canada into all its activities, thus helping to preserve the well-being of humans, animals and the ecosystem we all share.

In closing, protecting the health and safety of Canadians remains a top priority for our government in both the short and long term. This includes ensuring preparedness for future pandemics and global health events. That is why we are supportive in principle of several key elements underpinning this proposed legislation.

Once again, I thank the House for the opportunity to discuss Bill C-293 and highlight what the government is doing regarding pandemic prevention and preparedness.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-293, An Act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness, as reported (without amendment) from the committee, and of Motion No. 1.

Motions in Amendment

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the common-sense Canadians in the reasonable riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke to reveal what this private member's bill is really about. I oppose Bill C-293 because it seeks to cover up the repeated failures by the government during the pandemic. I do not believe it is the intention of the member for Beaches—East York to cover up his party’s gross incompetence, but if passed, that would be the effect of this bill.

As more Canadians are forced to attend political re-education camps, they are only learning that intention does not matter, only effect. Similarly, I do not think it was the intention of the member to perpetuate harmful racist stereotypes about people who live in China, but this bill does have that effect. Thankfully, I have not been forced to attend a Marxist re-education program yet. That is why I still believe the intention does matter a great deal.

It is clear the intention of the member for Beaches—East York was to have the federal government undergo a critical examination of how it managed the pandemic, then use that knowledge to inform the next pandemic plan. We have all heard the calls for an independent public inquiry or a royal commission into the handling of the pandemic, but this does not do that.

Instead, this bill would have the Minister of Health appoint a committee of gender-balanced advisors. These hand-picked Liberal advisors would review not just the federal government’s actions, but also the actions of provincial and municipal governments. Barging into provincial jurisdiction seems to be a favourite pastime of the NDP-Liberal coalition. It also has the added bonus effect of diluting any possible criticisms that could come from a report prepared by people selected by the health minister.

That the member for Beaches—East York felt the need to bring forward this bill is a scathing rebuke of the NDP-Liberal government. Despite repeated assurances during the pandemic that the government would conduct an independent review, the Liberal member had so little confidence in his own government that he had to try to pass a law to get them to act responsibly.

At the same time, the Liberal cabinet had so little confidence in its caucus that even while this bill was before committee last October, the health minister was conducting a secret review. When journalist Paul Wells asked the government in November if there was a secret pandemic review, the government stonewalled him. If not for the Order Paper question put forth by the member for Yorkton—Melville, it is likely this secret pandemic review would never have come to light.

Fortunately, Canadians do not have to wait for the Liberals to release results of their secret pandemic review. The United States National Institutes of Health conducted a review of Canada’s pandemic response. Here is what it wrote:

In comparison with its southern neighbors in the Americas, namely the United States and Mexico, the Canadian experience appears to have been a relative success. However, comparisons with exemplars during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as Australia, New Zealand and South Korea, highlight shortcomings in Canada's pandemic preparedness and responses.

The British Medical Journal conducted a review in 2023. Here is what it found:

Experts found that lessons from the 2003’s SARS-CoV-1 outbreak had not been heeded and Canada’s governments and health authorities were ill-prepared for Covid-19, with fragmented health leadership hindering a coordinated response.

That quote from the journal of medicine really underscores a major problem with this bill. The 2003 SARS outbreak was supposed to be the wake-up call. It was the catalyst for creating the Public Health Agency of Canada. There was a pandemic plan in place, just as this bill calls for. There was an international pandemic surveillance unit, just as this bill calls for, except the Liberals gutted the surveillance unit to focus on flavoured vaping.

They ignored the existing pandemic plan and decades of emergency management practices, which brings us to this legislation. If all this bill was proposing was to have the health minister appoint some advisors and draw up a plan, it would already be moot. The minister already has the authority to appoint advisors and has already done so in secret. The government already has the authority to draw up a pandemic preparedness plan. If the government already has all the powers it needs, what is this bill really about?

Earlier I mentioned that this bill reinforces harmful racist stereotypes. With its focus on regulating agriculture and putting limits on land use to prevent urbanization, it reinforces the racist “wet market” theory. Despite the fact that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was conducting research on coronavirus carried by bats, which scientists had collected and brought back to Wuhan, many still believe the virus crossed multiple species at a live animal market.

For too many, it was easier to believe that people who reside in China live, work and shop for food in unsanitary conditions. These outdated stereotypes risk blinding us to the growing threat of bioterror and biowarfare.

For all of human history, the viruses which sought to kill us have been the kind which cross species, but we do not live in that world anymore. We live in a world of low-cost gene editing. The rapid development of mRNA shots illustrates just how powerful biotechnology has become, yet the bill is entirely silent on the most likely source of the next deadly pandemic. Instead, the bill seeks to use pandemic preparation as a pretext to advance the progressive ideological agenda, a communist manifesto.

The bill calls for new regulations on farming. It would grant the minister the power to shut down any type of animal farming deemed high risk. Say good-bye to the chicken and pork industries in Canada.

Before my Liberal colleagues begin screaming disinformation, I would encourage them to compare what subparagraph 4(2)(l)(ii) says versus subparagraph 4(2)(l)(iv). Subparagraph (ii) calls for the regulation of commercial activities, including industrial animal farming. Subparagraph (iv) says that any farming involving “high-risk species” is to be phased out. Nowhere does the bill define what a high-risk species is, but a reasonable person could assume that any species that has previously been the source of a deadly virus would be a high risk. There is a big difference between regulating risk and phasing out risk.

If the member were truly concerned about the pandemic risk of productive farming practices, he could have brought together farmers and scientists to come up with legislation to reduce risk. However, that is not the goal of the Liberal vegan base. They want to phase out livestock farming altogether. Using people's fears of another pandemic to push that agenda is diabolical. However, that is the difference between a Conservative vegan and a Liberal one. The Conservative vegans just want affordable fruits and vegetables for themselves, while the Liberal ones seek to impose their vegetables on everybody else.

For the record, not all far-left radical socialists are vegan. That is why the bill also calls for measures to promote “alternative proteins”.

Alternative protein is just a far-left dog whistle that means crickets. What is it with the far-left and their desire to have us all eat bugs? First they claimed we would have to eat bugs because of overpopulation. When that did not pan out, they seized on climate change and claimed that crickets produce fewer greenhouse gases per pound of protein, all the while portraying cows as climate criminals. Now, they are using the threat of future pandemics to phase out pork and poultry, while pushing their favourite alternative protein. Canadians are not biting; they see through this pretense.

What Canadians do not see is any real accountability from this government for the decisions taken during the pandemic.

With the member for Beaches—East York's reputation for independence within one of the most servile Liberal caucuses I have ever seen, it is easy to imagine the bill may have started out seeking real accountability. Unfortunately, the only contribution to pandemic preparedness the publication of the bill achieves is to increase the nation's supply of tissue paper. It would give powers to the health minister that the health minister already has. It seeks an advisory committee the minister has already appointed in secret. It reinforces the racist stereotypes of people living in China. It is a power grab for opponents of modern farming. It remains completely silent on the increasing risk that the next pandemic could originate in a laboratory.

At best, the bill is ineffectual. At worst, it opens an avenue for more regulation of land use and seeks to phase out modern farming. It may have been the intention of the member to use the bill to prepare Canada for the next pandemic, but the effect of the bill is to advance a far-left agenda while blinding us to the growing threat of bioterror. The bill is not worth the cost to Canadians.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

moved:

That Bill C-293 be amended by deleting Clause 3.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to my report stage amendment to Bill C-293, the pandemic prevention and preparedness act. My amendment would delete clause 3 of the legislation for the simple reason that this section, if it were allowed to stay in the bill, would prevent the establishment of a transparent and independent review of Canada's COVID-19 response.

Instead, as currently written, it would establish an “advisory committee” that would report directly to the Minister of Health. In other words, the coach would acting as referee, as the minister would be appointing those very people. Moreover, the legislation contains no requirement that the results of that advisory committee's review be tabled in Parliament or be made available to the public. This is simply unacceptable.

In the NDP's view, Canadians deserve a root-to-branch, dispassionate, independent and fully public assessment of the lessons learned throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Canada's New Democrats will not support any legislation that would prevent this. To be clear, our party strongly supports the other provisions outlined in the legislation. We believe that the Minister of Health should be required to establish a pandemic prevention and preparedness plan and appoint a national pandemic prevention and preparedness coordinator. If my amendment is adopted, New Democrats will support the legislation at third reading because it would preserve those valuable parts of the bill. However, if my amendment is blocked, we will not hesitate to vote against the bill.

It is important to note that the amendment at report stage would not have been necessary if the Conservatives and the Liberals had not joined forces at the Standing Committee on Health to block my motion to amend the bill to create an independent public inquiry to Canada's COVID-19 response. On October 23, 2023, I moved an amendment at the health committee to legally mandate that a COVID-19 inquiry, under the Inquiries Act, be launched within 90 days of Bill C-293's adoption.

Under the Inquiries Act, commissions of inquiry are established to impartially investigate issues of national importance and provide findings and recommendations. This is Canada's national legislation to get real answers to important public policy questions. Unlike the advisory committee proposed by clause 3 of the bill before us, however, commissions of inquiry have the power to subpoena witnesses, take evidence under oath, order production of documents and retain the services of technical advisers and experts. Hearings are held in public, and the commission's findings and recommendations are reported to the public.

Shockingly, however, the Conservatives sat on their hands and abstained on my amendment, allowing the Liberals, who voted against it, to effectively block such an inquiry. Interestingly, under the leadership of Erin O'Toole, the Conservative Party during the pandemic repeatedly called for an independent, expert-led public inquiry into Canada's COVID-19 response, and even currently they often criticize the way the federal government handled the COVID-19 inquiry, with many criticisms that the NDP shares. The Conservative Party pledged during the last election to call such an inquiry.

I can see why the Liberals would be reluctant to call an inquiry into their own government's COVID-19 response, but I find it rather difficult to understand why Conservatives colluded with them to block an independent inquiry into our country's response to the most severe pandemic in a century. Conservatives and Liberals joining a COVID collusion coalition, indeed. The Conservatives are fond of tossing around the word “coalition”. Perhaps they can explain to Canadians why they joined in a COVID collusion coalition with the Liberals to block an independent COVID-19 inquiry.

Perhaps they decided to flip-flop on the need for an independent inquiry last fall because, at that time, former Reform Party leader Preston Manning was urging the federal Conservatives to weaponize the dubious findings of his highly politicized COVID review. While the Liberals want to provide the illusion of oversight and accountability with inadequate internal reviews as contained in this legislation, the Conservatives seem to want to play political games with partisan reports. New Democrats, for our part, want a full, fair, fearless and public COVID-19 inquiry led by independent experts. That is because the NDP believes Canadians deserve answers, and we will settle for no less.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck Canada, all levels of government had to respond to keep Canadians safe. People have the right to know why decisions were taken, what mistakes were made and if their government acted appropriately. Throughout the pandemic, New Democrats identified the eventual need for a fully independent, comprehensive and penetrating review of Canada's COVID-19 preparedness response. To date, the Prime Minister has deferred questions about a COVID-19 inquiry, only saying that there will be a time for a “lessons learned” exercise someday in the future.

In September 2022, the former Liberal health minister noted that a government decision could come “soon” on what kind of review should be held. However, when asked if it should be independent, he would only say that a strong review is necessary.

With the emergency pandemic conditions behind us, the NDP believes it is unacceptable that the Liberals still have not called an independent review of Canada's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Frankly, we are shocked that the Conservatives blocked one. Instead of papering over the federal government's inadequacies and failures, we must leave no stone unturned to learn from past mistakes and to prepare for future threats.

Many prominent public health and security experts have called for the federal government to launch an expert-led independent inquiry into Canada's COVID-19 response. For example, the British Medical Journal recently published a series that examined Canada's COVID-19 response, and it called for an independent national inquiry. The series' authors are experts across a diverse range of clinical and research areas. The picture that emerged from their review was an ill-prepared country with outdated data systems, poor coordination and cohesion, and blindness about its citizens' diverse needs.

The authors found that what ultimately saved Canada was a largely willing populace that withstood stringent public health measures and achieved among the world's highest levels of vaccination coverage voluntarily. In other words, Canadians stepped up during the COVID-19 pandemic while their governments faltered.

Major questions remain, including whether vaccine mandates were warranted, why infection-acquired immunity was ignored and why federal emergency preparedness was so inadequate. There are many more important questions that Canadians want answers to.

The British Medical Journal series outlined many reasons why an independent inquiry is needed in Canada. Here is the first:

...failing to look to the past will ensure an unchanged future. Undoubtedly, lessons can be drawn to inform new health investments and preparedness, and much learning comes from decisions and actions that failed or faltered.

Positive lessons can also pave the way to a better future, when we can review what went right.

Second, lacking an independent federal inquiry allows others to step into the frame. For example, the so-called National Citizens Inquiry, launched by Preston Manning, has been fuelled by misinformation, ideology and conspiracy theories.

Third, an inquiry would help deliver on Canada's ambition to be a leader on the world stage, since domestic and global health security are linked.

Fourth, an inquiry would provide an actionable framework for reforming Canada's health care and public health systems, which were struggling prepandemic and are currently on life support.

Finally and most importantly, an inquiry would provide accountability for the nearly 60,000 direct deaths and five million cases of COVID in Canada that devastated families and left a legacy of long COVID for many in their wake.

New Democrats agree with the British Medical Journal. We are calling on the federal government to call an independent public inquiry into Canada's COVID-19 response without delay. For that reason, we are moving this amendment today and can only support this legislation if it is adopted.

We cannot accept an inadequate whitewash. Only a root-to-branch, fearless, comprehensive, thorough, public and independent COVID-19 inquiry will do in these circumstances. Canadians deserve no less. Only the NDP is standing in this House to demand that. That is what is fuelling this amendment today.

Speaker's Ruling

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

There is one motion in amendment standing on the Notice Paper for the report stage of Bill C-293. Motion No. 1 will be debated and voted upon.

The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-293, An Act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness, as reported (without amendment) from the committee.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Before the bell rang to call for the vote, at the end of our last meeting, I was saying that I had been very patient. I pointed out that I had signed the request for a meeting under Standing Order 106(4) on November 2, when journalists had already been questioning the Public Health Agency of Canada for a week. I found it curious that just as we were filing this request, the minister, as if by a miracle, started talking.

During our discussions last time, our colleague Mr. Davies said that the role of a parliamentarian was, among other things, to ask questions about governance, but above all to try to control government spending. This is the role assigned to us by our mandates. When a public health agency fails to answer simple questions, it seems to me that it's urgent to intervene.

The last time, the question of urgency was invoked. Now, there was an issue that was becoming increasingly urgent in relation to the management of the pandemic. However, this committee refused an amendment during the study of Bill C‑293 which aimed to establish an independent public inquiry, under which a body could have been set up by a judge which would have had the powers normally attributed to such a commission of inquiry, such as that of subpoenaing witnesses, for example. From the moment the government doesn't want an independent commission of inquiry as the legislation prescribes, and the Public Health Agency of Canada decides not to answer simple questions about contracts, it becomes urgent to intervene.

Is a culture of omerta taking hold at the agency? Do we have to wait for the minister's signal to finally reveal what voters need to know? One hundred and fifty million dollars is not a trivial sum.

I have total respect for institutions, because parliamentary democracy requires respect for institutions. However, Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux said that, in this case, the refusal to disclose any information about a $150 million loss is highly unusual. He would have expected the department to be able to provide at least some details. In his view, if the department can't or won't reveal the name of the company, it should at least explain the circumstances under which it happened. After all, a $150-million loss on a contract deserves some explanation.

For the benefit of those listening tonight, let me remind you that the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer is an institution that is totally independent of the executive.

Kevin Page, the former parliamentary budget officer, said it was a significant total loss. He finds it unacceptable that the Public Health Agency of Canada refuses to answer our questions about how the money was spent or written off.

It seems to me that these opinions should be respected. I'm not motivated by partisanship in saying this.

On the other side of the room, people are implying that there are more urgent things to do and deal with. I'm well aware that the Standing Committee on Health is very busy pursuing its studies and adopting its reports. I myself have waited a long time for the study on breast implants and the creation of a breast implant registry to come to fruition. In fact, we're not far from adopting this report and its recommendations before tabling it in the House.

Our committee is very busy, but that's no reason to overlook an event like this. So I expect we'll agree very quickly that we need to do this study. We can do it as proposed in the subamendment or the amendment; but insofar as possible, I'd like to avoid doing what we did last time—let's not take a whole session to try and convince our colleagues, who still refuse an independent commission of inquiry, that we should go ahead. In fact, we're prepared to rearrange our timetable accordingly, i.e. we can do both: we can spend part of our meetings dealing with routine business, if I can put it that way, and another part dealing with this study. If we could all agree to this, it would be to the benefit of all, and especially the citizens, who are entitled to explanations.

I experienced the management of the pandemic right from the start, during the meetings of the Standing Committee on Health, with Mr. Powlowski and Mr. Davies in particular, if I'm not mistaken. For a week or two, the Standing Committee on Health was the only committee in session. Then the Standing Committee on Finance started sitting too. So it was clear that we were dealing with emergency management. I tried to examine this emergency management and ask questions responsibly. When I agreed to sit on the Standing Committee on Health, the first thing I said was that I would not use health issues to play petty politics, that I would act responsibly. I challenge anyone around the table to find a single statement of mine, after the pandemic happened, that was tinged with partisanship.

Even today, I take the floor not to delay our work, but to try to redirect things a little. It's true that we have our work cut out for us. It's true that we have important matters to deal with. However, it's also true that the Standing Committee on Health must play its role as a check on the executive and question the management of the pandemic, especially since, I repeat, the government doesn't want an independent public commission of inquiry. Yet it could answer questions and shed light on all aspects of the pandemic.

We experienced this situation at the Standing Committee on Health. We told ourselves that it wasn't time to lay blame, but that it was time to succeed in obtaining vaccines and personal protective equipment. Mr. Powlowski was right to say so last time. We were told that the timetable for creating a vaccine, even if we sped things up, even if everyone worked together, would be between two and a half and five years. In the end, it turned out to be much faster. I also remember how, at one point, the opposition parties were urging the government to reserve vaccines. I remember that. We said we should have as wide a range as possible, because we didn't know which vaccines would work. There were various ideas about that.

I don't want to do the job that a commission of inquiry would do. That said, at the start of the pandemic, scientists were telling us how great it was to see information being exchanged and everyone working towards the same goal. Personally, I wondered if it would be like that right to the end. I wondered if, on the day when someone came up with a vaccine, we would continue to exchange all the information and vaccinate the whole planet simultaneously. That's not what happened. Personally, I thought there would be coordination between the World Health Organization and the rich countries, so that what finally happened would not have occurred. In my opinion, in their way of appropriating vaccines, rich countries all over the planet missed the mark.

Of course, there was pressure. The opposition parties were lobbying and asking the government if we were going to come in at the back of the queue. They wondered why the U.S. had received vaccines when we hadn't yet. This led to purchases of vaccines before Christmas, but they cost us much more than they did elsewhere.

You can see that my words are not motivated by partisanship.

I'm only talking about one episode. I remember that all the parties made a joint public statement about temporarily lifting the patents because there was a supply problem. Why were there several variants? Because people did not have access to vaccines in certain parts of the world. Since Canada, as a wealthy country, had access to a variety of vaccines to counter the variants, it began sending vaccines that were almost out of date to other countries. What's more, in these countries, the vaccine deployment chain was not yet organized, not to mention all the constraints this imposed on us. For example, vaccines had to be stored in freezers or kept cold. A lot of resources were wasted, and we couldn't take advantage of the patents to vaccinate the population on the spot. In short, we made a lot of mistakes, all over the planet, during the pandemic.

If we're not willing to rise above partisanship to shed light on the situation we experienced, determine what could have been done better and admit the mistakes we made, how are we going to manage to learn from them? Only a public and independent commission of inquiry could have led to this.

As we know, there was a global information network, which was recognized. How is it that it was ineffective and that some countries on the planet waited for the flag to be raised? Was this the responsibility of a single government, or was it the result of other decisions? A public inquiry would reveal a great deal. Still, we're not going to be able to draw any conclusions, since I don't see any willingness to hold a public, independent inquiry.

As soon as you choose to treat things à la carte, everything becomes urgent. That's effectively what we've decided to do. Because we don't want to create a public and independent inquiry, we'll see the same situation over and over again. Every time a situation arises about which we have questions, and certain government bodies maintain a culture of opacity rather than transparency, we're going to end up with timetables that are upset or mishandled, because we have to shed light on a situation. Now, when you don't want to approve a public inquiry, you can't shed light on a situation 10 years later.

There's one key word to remember from this whole story and from what I've said. When I signed this request for a meeting under Standing Order 106(4), it wasn't because I wanted to filibuster, it was because I wanted us to act with transparency.

The day citizens lose confidence in their institutions, we'll have only ourselves to blame, because we ourselves will have abused our institutions and failed to give them the respect they deserve. We unfortunately experienced this during the pandemic.

Some might consider that my comments are based in political philosophy or a certain conception of the state, and say that the Bloc Québécois, the Conservative Party and the NDP want to delay another very important study, but that's not what's happening. Personally, I'm trying to see if the people on the other side of the table would accept a compromise whereby two subjects would be dealt with at the same time. I'm not going to reveal things that have been said behind closed doors, but could we agree to keep the working arrangement we had behind closed doors the same when the cameras are on? That wasn't the case over the last few weeks, and we've suffered a bit for it. We could establish a work plan that consists of following our schedule while reserving part of our meetings to shed light on this issue, even if it means adding session hours.

I can work hard. I got up at 5 this morning and haven't stopped. I'm here and we're going to finish at 9:30 p.m. That's what people expect of us, to work hard. We worked hard seven days a week during the pandemic and we continue to do so. That's what we're here for and we love it.

So I'd like us to agree to reach our goals by Christmas. We can meet our planned work schedule and still allow ourselves to get to the bottom of this issue by hearing the witnesses who would be subpoenaed pursuant to this motion.

If there were a consensus, and if I understood the suggestions made by Mr. Davies, Mr. Ellis and Mr. Hanley last time, we could hold three-hour sessions. Two hours would be devoted to studying the issues we have agreed to take forward and the reports we have to adopt; the last hour would be devoted to the appearance of a key witness so that we could ask him questions about this unfortunate revelation, and above all, about this attitude we see which consists in saying that nothing will be revealed about it. This attitude is open to criticism, and it's on this that we urgently need to ask questions.

There are people who say we knew very well who it was. In any case, if the Parliamentary Budget Officer didn't know, it wasn't all that clear, even if you can always trace it back and find the information. So it's urgent to ask questions about this culture of opacity and get to the bottom of it.

Mr. Jowhari, last time, was saying that it was wrong to claim that the $150 million had been for nothing, since in the end it had been used to create a vaccine. We're talking about a vaccine that no one will be able to benefit from, but that's a different kettle of fish. It's a matter of interpretation. However, it would be the least we could do to allow us, as parliamentarians, to ask all the questions that need to be asked and to let all the organizations that report to the Minister of Health know that the members of the Standing Committee on Health will not let anything pass. Whenever a problem like the one we've just experienced emerges, we'll set aside time in our work to examine it, because that's our duty. That's what we were elected to do.

I'm going to stop here, because I'm thinking of my colleagues who are listening to me. A consensus seems to be emerging and I want to avoid looking like the one who is unduly delaying the work, which is not my objective. I may speak later in response to an intervention that might inspire me. For now, if my colleagues agree, we could vote on the subamendment, then on the amendment, and finally on the motion. The solution I propose seems to me to correspond to that expressed by Mr. Hanley, Mr. Ellis and Mr. Davies.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

The $150 million is not lost. It resulted in a vaccine approved by Health Canada.

What happened subsequently is of interest. Again, since my colleagues like to refer to the media reports, I'd like to quote a February 2, 2023, report from CBC. It reads:

Then in March, the World Health Organization decided not to accept Medicago's COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, citing the company's ties to big tobacco. Marlboro cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris International was once a shareholder of Medicago, but divested all of its shares in late 2022.

Can the $150 million be accounted for? Yes. What was it invested in? It was invested in R and D. Did the R and D result in a vaccine being developed that was approved by Health Canada? Yes. Did the business go forward? No. Why? The World Health Organization didn't approve it because of ties to a tobacco organization, which meant that the vaccine that was manufactured was available domestically, but not internationally. That's therefore a business decision by Medicago and Mitsubishi, which is probably worthy of a study.

Now we come to the other part of this. There was $173 million also invested in Medicago for the site expansion, after the approval of the vaccine by Health Canada. It is worthy of study to see whether the $173 million actually went to the site expansion and what the status of that site expansion is.

When we look at this motion and see it's talking about “lost” rather than a business loss, it raises questions. When we see unfulfilled contracts, there are grounds for us to look and see whether the contract was fulfilled or not. The AG has done that. Whether it's $300 million.... It's not.

Also, the public accounts committee is actually doing this study. The notion of this study as it is in the motion is not acceptable to our side. Based on referring to the media, there are areas that the media has not had the opportunity to explore and that may potentially lead to misinformation.

I'm not going to make any comments on the other.... My colleagues talked about many other items, which we will deal with in the election in 2025.

I want to close by saying that I believe this is another tactic by our Conservative colleagues to delay the study of women's health. Today we were supposed to start the study of women's health. We have the children's health report that is not completed. We have the breast implant report that is due for its second version, with some very good recommendations, which we need to finalize. We have the PMPRB study, which is now going to get pushed back. We have the PPE study, and we know the fate of Bill C-293.

Mr. Chair, there are areas of concern in this motion. I'd like to look at a modified or amended version of this motion for us to be able to bring total clarity to the issue of where the $150 million was spent—we know who spent it and what it was spent on—and the state of the $170-million site expansion.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thank you very much, Chair.

My deep apologies to the translators. The passion, I'm afraid, overtook me, and I apologize deeply for that.

That being said, why did I wander back to the bill at hand? Because there were accusations around this table that said this was a filibuster to get rid of Bill C-293.

I would love nothing more than to continue to talk about this bill. Sadly, there's something that is way more pressing when 20 Canadians a day are dying; 20-plus Canadians a day are dying because of a failed NDP-Liberal coalition experiment. Unfortunately, the NDP member, who believes himself to be the arbiter of this committee, continues to want to interrupt, even though perhaps, if closer attention was paid to the incredibly important words I'm saying, he would understand the connection to the injustice attempted upon the Conservatives in suggesting that this was a filibuster related to Bill C-293.

That is why I needed to make that connection to the matter at hand, related to homelessness and the ongoing opioid experiment, which continues to be perpetrated, propagated and perpetuated by the petulant Liberals. That causes great consternation for all of us who sit on this side, the Conservative side of the House.

What we know very clearly is that safe supply is a failure. It is a failure, an abject failure. It doesn't matter which euphemism we wish to say about it, whether we want to call it “safe supply” or “safer supply” or “safest supply”. Again, those are the superlatives we have at our use in the English language. Whichever one we want to use, we know that it is an experiment, and we know that it has failed. We know very clearly that this is a lesson from history. Not to be too trite, but we know that those who refuse to listen to, know or believe history are doomed to repeat it.

When we look back at the Purdue Pharma fiasco, at the tragedy, as mentioned in this article, we know very clearly that Purdue Pharma misrepresented the risk of addiction. As this article talks about, there was a systematic effort to minimize the risk of addiction and the use of opioids for the treatment of “chronic non-cancer-related pain”. One of the most critical issues regarding the use of opioids in the treatment of chronic non-cancer pain is the potential of iatrogenic addiction. I'll come back to that.

The article states, “The lifetime prevalence of addictive disorders has been estimated at 3% to 16% of the general population.” When we look at that, what does that mean? It means, for those being prescribed opioids for chronic non-cancer pain, that even by giving them opioids there was a likelihood that they were going to become addicted to them.

Now what are we doing? At the current time, this NDP-Liberal government is not prescribing them carefully in small quantities and in small dosage amounts. They are giving these medications to Canadians for free in large quantities: an incredibly potent opioid called hydromorphone. When we look at that, colleagues, that is anathema to the suggestion that, after the historical tragic events related to Purdue Pharma, we all need to hear the lessons thereof, such that we are now doomed to repeat them, and that is exactly what we shall do.

Mr. Chair, if I may, may I have a point of clarification? If I agree to adjourn this meeting, will I still have the floor when we pick it up next time?

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Do you know what? It's fascinating to me that the former Liberal speaker—I don't know if that's the right term, but he certainly was elected as a Liberal—was talking about decorum.

What do we have over here? When it becomes uncomfortable, we have colleagues of mine, who know that this is an incredibly important and difficult topic, wanting to interrupt. I think that is a bit baseless. It is juvenile and incredibly inappropriate that we don't want to talk about the issues that we know are being brought forward because of the policies of the Liberal government.

We know it. Everybody here knows it, and do you know what? It's uncomfortable and it's painful and it's unpleasant, yada yada yada—too bad. Canadians are now uncovering the abscess that exists in their own country, which is that Liberal government, supported by these members across from me, where I'm pointing. They need to grow up and decide what side of history they want to be on. That's their choice.

As I was saying, on the MAID regime, which I sadly had to sit through as a member of Parliament—“sadly” because oftentimes it would appear to me that there was a gleeful nature of the Liberals as they brought forward more and more abilities for Canadians to kill themselves—what we saw there, very clearly, is that depression is in its infancy in terms of diagnosis and treatment. Now we will have a regime in this country that is not supported by Canada's psychiatrists. We know that very clearly.

There is one psychiatrist on that committee who continues to push forward that agenda, and now what do we see? We see other folks who want to take advantage of that and are suddenly saying: “Hey, you know what? People, sadly, are addicted to drugs. Let's let them end their lives.” My colleague here has an interesting article with pictures of people who died of overdoses and pictures of them as children. Everyone around this table and anyone who's listening out there knows that no kid in this country grew up saying, “I wish that, when I grow up, I will be addicted to drugs.”

This safer/safe, government-sponsored, hydromorphone-doling-out-for-free program is allowing them to continue to be addicted to drugs. That is a very sad state of affairs in this country, especially when.... I don't even know how many Liberals there are in the House of Commons. There are too many—I know that. They know the difference, and they refuse to stand up and be counted and to understand that this is an incredibly slippery slope that we are going down.

Not only are we now providing drug addicts with drugs for free—drugs that we know are being sold from the investigative reports of people like Adam Zivo and also from the physicians my colleague named and the letters they've sent to this government, and from other physicians who are too afraid to come forward because they're afraid their professional reputations will be sullied by this Liberal government—but we continue to allow this to happen. Shame, shame, shame. That's what I say—shame.

To go back to this original letter that we have received from Dr. Robert Cooper, which was sent to, again, the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, it says that it is reckless for people suffering from addictions, as it is not supervised to ensure it is taken safely in the manner intended by the manufacturer. Also, it is provided in a way so that it can be and is being sold, with the funds utilized to purchase even more potent and dangerous opioids such as fentanyl.

We hear that this is the enemy: a toxic supply. This is what the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, who came before this committee before, said: that this is a dangerous drug, that it's toxic, but if we give them something else, then they'll stop using fentanyl.

Sadly, we know that is the high the people who are addicted to drugs want. They want a high from fentanyl. All they are doing, very simply, is taking the hydromorphone that is being supplied for free and selling it to kids and other people who have never used opioids before, and they are then buying fentanyl with the money.

This is not a great stretch of imagination or a fantasy or the unicorns and fairy dust that we hear from this Liberal government on other topics. This is fact that is being reported from people who work in the system. This is being reported by people who use the drugs on the street.

Why do I say it slowly? It's because it appears that is the only way it can be heard by my Liberal colleagues. Why is it that we need to talk forever in this committee to get anything through? It's because otherwise there'll be a motion to adjourn the debate on this, which we have already seen.

I shall continue.

It is provided with a reckless disregard for our communities, as it has increased the availability of high-potency pharmaceutical-grade opioids on our streets and increased the number of people suffering from addiction. They are seeing more people. These are addictions experts. This is what they do. They are seeing more and more people coming and saying, “Wow, I have a problem with drugs and—guess what—I had free hydromorphone supplied by the government” or “I got the free hydromorphone supplied by the government, and—guess what I did with it—I sold it and bought something else with it.”

They are selling it. Are they buying more fentanyl? They probably are. Are they trying to live because of the incredible crushing inflation and cost-of-living crisis that this Liberal government has created through their reckless spending? Yes, of course they are. If they can't afford to put a roof over their heads, the likelihood, of course, of their being addicted to opioids is probably greater. If they're addicted to opioids, it is much more difficult for them to put a roof over their heads. Can they feed themselves? They can't do that well. Can they heat their homes? Well, they don't have any homes to heat. We know that very clearly.

Continuing to punish Canadians is what this Liberal government is bent on doing with their NDP coalition partners.

Third, it is reckless, a complete failure of monitoring and supervision, and an abrogation of the responsibility to do so, with an apparent reliance on the criminal justice system to prevent diversion when it is widely known that the criminal justice system has already failed to prevent the sale of opioids during the current opioid epidemic.

Colleagues, one of the things that I think are important for us to begin to understand is how related this epidemic that we have is to the OxyContin crisis. We know very clearly that in popular literature—and if you're not a student of history, you can look at Netflix, on which there is a series called Painkiller. We know very clearly that this tragedy that exists on Canadian and American streets at the current time is realistically related to the promotion and marketing of OxyContin.

There is an interesting article in the American Journal of Public Health entitled exactly that, “The Promotion and Marketing of OxyContin: Commercial Triumph, Public Health Tragedy”. This public health tragedy continues.

We know very clearly from this article.... It talks about controlled drugs. It has an American flavour to it and certainly it's not a style that we talk about in Canada, but we talk about opioids. Certainly realistically they are controlled drugs in terms of how they are supposed to be prescribed and given out in a very controlled manner by responsible physicians to those who need them, who we now know, as a cautionary tale, are not very common.

This article starts:

Controlled drugs, with their potential for abuse and diversion, can pose public health risks that are different from—and more problematic than—those of uncontrolled drugs when they are overpromoted and highly prescribed.

We have an asinine situation now where these drugs are not only not prescribed, but they don't cost anything. They're not just highly prescribed; they're highly given out. There is no place in the world where anyone could possibly fathom that. Not only are these drugs, as we clearly know, dangerous and should be controlled, but they are now being given out by this government.

What did I say previously about fentanyl? We talked about fentanyl. What makes it so dangerous?

This is from Canada.ca:

It is 20 to 40 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine. This makes the risk of accidental overdose very high.

Realistically, we know that hydromorphone is a little less potent than fentanyl—understandably. It is dosed in milligrams, not micrograms. We know very clearly that is very different. I understand that. That being said, for those who don't partake in opioids or haven't had the need to use opioids, we know these drugs are incredibly dangerous. Not only are they now highly prescribed; they are just given out. They are given out for free. How does that make any sense?

When we look at this.... This talks about an “in-depth analysis of the promotion and marketing of OxyContin”, which is also known as oxycodone. We know that:

When Purdue Pharma introduced OxyContin in 1996, it was aggressively marketed and highly promoted. Sales grew from $48 million in 1996 to almost $1.1 billion in 2000.

Listen to this:

The high availability of OxyContin correlated with increased abuse, diversion, and addiction, and by 2004 OxyContin had become a leading drug of abuse in the United States.

It is certainly not different in Canada.

That was in 2004. It had a $1-billion market in 2000 in the United States, and in 2004, it had become the leading drug of abuse in the United States. That was in 2004. That was 19 years ago.

Nineteen years ago, everybody, it seems, knew that OxyContin was a leading drug of abuse in the United States, and here we are, decriminalizing.... I'm sorry. We are not just decriminalizing drugs in this crazed experiment, but we have a government that is giving out opioids—exceedingly potent opioids—for free. It's giving them away.

If anyone out there could possibly make any sense of the fact that we know what happened, as a cautionary tale, with OxyContin, oxycodone, beginning in the United States and the trickle-down effect into Canada, and now we have a government that seems to.... I can't even.... It defies my ability to understand how a government could possibly think that giving its cousin out for free would help an addiction, an overdose, an overdose death, homelessness, affordability or a cost of living crisis get any better. That does not make any sense at all. It is mind-boggling and mind-numbing. I don't have any ability to understand that.

This article continues:

Under current regulations, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is limited in its oversight of the marketing and promotion of controlled drugs. However, fundamental changes in the promotion and marketing of controlled drugs by the pharmaceutical industry, and an enhanced capacity of the FDA to regulate and monitor such promotion, can positively affect public health.

What we're talking about here is asking a pharmaceutical industry to change how these drugs are promoted and regulated.

What we have come to is a government that has effectively deregulated, unregulated and dysregulated. It has totally and absolutely gone against regulations by not just promoting a potent opioid but also giving it away for free. Think about it. If I have a product, why would I need to promote it if my objective is simply to give it away? I don't need to promote it if I'm giving it away.

On one side, we have a government in the United States realizing that pharmaceutical industries need to be more regulated in their promotion of opioids. On the other, we have a government north of the border giving away opioids and suggesting that, in the land of unicorns and fairy dust, this is making the opioid crisis—and again I'd use the superlative of crisis—better. It's doing that mind-numbingly, without any ability for me to understand that. When we go on and begin to understand that, we.... Some people say, “This is not related to hydromorphone or fentanyl.”

This article talks about it:

OxyContin’s commercial success did not depend on the merits of the drug compared with other available opioid preparations. The Medical Letter on Drugs and Therapeutics concluded in 2001 [22 years ago] that oxycodone offered no advantage over appropriate doses of other potent opioids.

For people out there to say that hydromorphone is better than fentanyl or oxycodone.... Clearly, we know that, in esteemed, useful and well-read medical journals, this is absolutely total hogwash. There is no difference among these opioids at all. They are all incredibly dangerous. Where does that leave us? That leaves us....

Again, when we look at this, there are some other things here that talk about the relative potencies, but I think I will leave that out. I may come back to it.

I'll continue on:

The promotion and marketing of OxyContin occurred during a recent trend in the liberalization of the use of opioids in the treatment of pain, particularly for chronic non–cancer-related pain. Purdue pursued an “aggressive” campaign to promote the use of opioids in general and OxyContin in particular. In 2001 alone, the company spent $200 million [U.S.] in an array of approaches to market and promote OxyContin.

When you begin to look at that, it becomes very clear. I was a practising physician during those days. I clearly remember many edicts coming out of the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian College of Family Physicians and—I'm not entirely sure, but probably—the Canadian Pain Society suggesting that someone treating chronic non-cancer pain.... If physicians were not prescribing enough opioids to treat that pain, they were bad doctors.

Do you know what? That was wrong. We know it was wrong, but those of us who are physicians in this room know it happened. We saw those edicts come out of the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian College of Family Physicians and, as I said, probably the Canadian Pain Society, and we know in retrospect that was wrong. There were changes that came forward. They talked to physicians about how they should prescribe opioids in a more responsible fashion. There were also edicts that subsequently came out talking about how much morphine equivalence of opioid should be prescribed, because we knew these substances were being over-prescribed in a highly regulated fashion already.

Now what do we have? We have a government giving them away for free and continuing to ignore their own advice, which says that these substances need to be prescribed very carefully in small quantities and for short periods of time. We have a government giving them away for free in gigantic quantities for unlimited periods of time. Now, if that is not the exact opposite, I don't know what is.

We have people getting eight-milligram tablets of hydromorphone in quantities of—depending on which article you want to read from Adam Zivo—26, 32 or 34 tablets at a time. Now, if that is not big quantities of high-potency opioids given out in an unrestricted, long-term fashion, I don't know what is. This is the exact opposite of a careful, short-term, low-dose prescribing of opioids, which was suggested to physicians who should be controlling this.

It is mindless, and it continues to this day. Folks around this table then want to say, “Why is it? Why do Conservatives want to talk about opioids? Why do they want to talk incessantly about this?” Do you know what? It's because clearly the Liberal government does not get it. Until we say things over and over again, almost ad nauseam, it clearly appears not to be understood.

I do know that one of my colleagues, my colleague from the Bloc, referenced a motion that has been moved—I don't know whether it's been moved, but it's been tabled—to talk about the opioid experiment. If we had confidence on this side of the chamber we're in this evening that our colleagues would actually do the study, then maybe we wouldn't have to be here tonight talking about this over and over again.

One of my colleagues even deemed this, in this motion, to be an opioid experiment. Do you know what? When you have an experiment that has gone awry and is causing harm, every medical journal out there knows that you stop that experiment early. That's what you do. You don't continue it on. When you realize that people are dying because of the drug that you're using, you don't continue to do the experiment. You stop it. You stop the experiment, but what are the geniuses in the Liberal government doing? They are doubling down.

They are doubling down: “Let's fight the Conservatives on this.” We heard this from my colleague this evening. We have those on the opposite side who think this is a waste of time, that all we're doing is wanting to filibuster to get rid of Bill C-293. Really? There is enough in Bill C-293 that we could have talked about it for 10 more years. It's a terrible piece of legislation. It's utterly ridiculous. It is fraught with incredible jurisdictional contradictions, which my Bloc colleague could have talked about for the next six years, at least, on his own. He brought an expert here to talk about Bill C-293, and he talked about how bad the jurisdictional infractions were with respect to his great province of Quebec. Now it is suddenly only the Conservatives who are trying to get rid of Bill C-293.

I had an opportunity today to meet with the deans of the agricultural and veterinarian schools from across our great country. They have a huge problem with Bill C-293. I read them sections of the bill, and I informed them that we had one meeting here with witnesses on Bill C-293.

They were aghast when they read sections of Bill C-293. When I told them that we had one meeting with witnesses, they couldn't believe it. To think that a bill wants to influence the food that we eat and how it's produced here in this country—we know that farmers are the greatest stewards of farmland and of farm animals in this entire country—then we have the audacity of Liberal members suggesting we are using opioids as a way to filibuster Bill C-293. It's hogwash. It's petty politics—absolutely incredulous.

When I begin to look at the topic at hand, which I will return to, understanding the scourge that opioids have caused and continue to cause for innumerable Canadians, this is absolutely an unacceptable and untenable position.

We know—again, very clearly—that the cost of living crisis this government has created is continuing to cause significant problems for Canadians. I would suggest to you that this opioid crisis is allowing this to be perpetuated. I quote:

From 1996 to 2001, Purdue conducted more than 40 national pain-management and speaker-training conferences at resorts in Florida, Arizona, and California. More than 5000 physicians, pharmacists, and nurses attended these all-expenses-paid symposia, where they were recruited and trained for Purdue's national speaker bureau. It is well documented that this type of pharmaceutical company symposium influences physicians’ prescribing, even though the physicians who attend such symposia believe that such enticements do not alter their prescribing patterns.

Certainly, that's been a huge argument inside the medical community for a long time. Isn't it interesting, though, colleagues? What we're talking about is how a company could influence the prescribing habits of physicians, and what we have now is these drugs being given out for free and Liberal colleagues suggesting that this is an appropriate and acceptable type of behaviour.

As I said, we have a scholarly article talking about this being inappropriate. It's inappropriate to try to influence physicians, who are the appropriate people to write prescriptions. It's inappropriate for them to be influenced to write more prescriptions, but it's not inappropriate for a government to give away the same drugs for free. Wow. Again, I can't even wrap my mind around how that would make any sense at all. It is absolute nonsense. That's what it is.

This article goes on and talks about how they possibly did this, how much money they spent to try to change physicians' minds, how many doctors they convinced to do this and that they gave them fishing hats, stuffed plush toys and CDs. When you look at this now, what are we doing? You don't need to influence doctors, because the Liberal government is giving away opioids for free.

Don't worry, Canadians, because when you're addicted to these opioids that this Liberal-NDP coalition is giving you for free in its crazed experiment, what are they going to do? They're going to kill you.

It's nonsense. It's absolute nonsense to continue to allow the propagation of medical assistance in dying—the euphemism by which it has become known—a procedure that was destined for those who had uncontrolled pain and a reasonable, foreseeable death, to now being for folks who have suffering because of homelessness. Perhaps it's because they can't find a job, they can't afford a house because of the 40-year high inflation of this Liberal government, or they can't afford to feed themselves, put a roof over their heads and heat their homes for winter because they are addicted to opioids. This government is culpable in the creation of this problem.

We are now going to say, “Let's make the problem go away. Let's simply make it go away.” You know what the old saying is: Dead men can't talk. Let's let them go away and not be a problem, because we—not me and not those of us on this side, but this NDP-Liberal coalition—have created a problem that is uncomfortable. I cannot understand why they want to continue to stand up and defend it, and do not have the guts and the good decency to step forward and say, “This is wrong. We made a mistake.”

That's what grown-ups do when they make mistakes. They admit they're wrong and they move on from their mistakes.

This country has trusted them to run this country for eight long and miserable years. What do we have? We have an opioid crisis that is beyond parallel. I'll just go back to that number I talked about earlier. That number went from one person dying every three days to more than 20 people dying every single day in this country due to opioids.

This experiment is being perpetuated by this NDP-Liberal government coalition. They will not back down from their position. No matter what happens, it is very clear they won't back down. When my colleagues begin asking why we need to talk incessantly about a problem, it's because they don't get it. That is why.

We know very clearly that the NDP member of this committee is a full-blown supporter drug decriminalization and the Liberal members have a boss and a PMO bent on safe supply. That makes me able to really understand why they're reluctant to talk about this topic. We look at Mr. Davies' provincial counterparts in the B.C. NDP as prime examples. Tent cities, crime, chaos, drugs and disorder have become the norm under their leadership, where drug overdose is now the leading cause of death for kids between the ages of 10 and 18.

Do you know what, colleagues? I need to read that again: Drug overdose is now the leading cause of death for kids between the ages of 10 and 18. I have three grown children and I have two grandchildren. This scares the daylights out of me because this is not just in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Edmonton and every other big city. This is in every town and village across this great country of ours.

Folks, believe it or not, for roughly the past year, the Prime Minister and the leader of the NDP authorized the B.C. government to allow crack, heroine, cocaine and fentanyl around children's playgrounds. They had to then create another edict, suddenly, to say that you can't have drugs around playgrounds and in areas that children frequent.

Are you kidding me? Do we think that it is suddenly an acceptable part of Canadian life to have these drugs around where families and children are all the time? It took the year before an election recently for them to walk this policy back and before they finally prohibited open air drug use around these areas. Colleagues, we know that this happened within the last one month. Wow, you shouldn't use drugs around kids. It's shameful.

You would think that after eight long and miserable years of this Liberal government, there would be a change of heart. Do you know what? I know very clearly that there is not a change of heart. Tonight we saw the incredulous activities of colleagues on the opposite side, with the NDP-Liberal coalition suggesting that this was a simple ploy by Conservatives to get around Bill C-293.

Bill C-293 is a ridiculous piece of legislation that allows this Liberal government to not have an inquiry with respect to their pandemic response. As I said, it creates incredible jurisdictional difficulties related to attempting to force Canadians to change how they farm this great land and how they produce protein for Canadians. It's interesting. I'll go back to the deans of agriculture and veterinary colleges today. They know and they've said out loud that Canada could be the entire breadbasket for the world.

What do we have? We have the NDP-Liberal coalition wanting to stand in the way of that. They say that farmers are mean people and that they're mean to their animals. They are mean. They don't know how to take care of animals. They haven't done it ever. They are bad stewards of the land. They're over-users of fertilizers, and they are unknowledgeable in practices of farming.

Do we really want to believe this? It's shocking. It is incredibly shocking. My friends, this is the track that the NDP-Liberal coalition wants you to go down. This is the track where they want Canadians to begin to believe that farmers are bad people. I know a lot of farmers. They are not bad people. They are perhaps the most optimistic people I have ever met. To be a farmer, you have to be optimistic. Who could possibly think, at the beginning of every growing season, that you're going to have enough rain and enough sun—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

I think it's pretty clear that we're not going to get to Bill C‑293 today. That's as much a question as it is a statement, Mr. Doherty.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 84 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health. Today’s meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders.

In accordance with our routine motion, I am informing the committee that all remote participants have completed the required connection tests in advance of the meeting.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Wednesday, February 8, 2023, the committee is resuming consideration of Bill C-293, an act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness. We are resuming clause-by-clause consideration of this bill. Where we left off was at clause 3 and amendment CPC-4.

Mr. Doherty, please go ahead.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Yes.

I move that Bill C‑293, in clause 3, at lines 25 and 26 on page 2, be amended by deleting the words “public health.”